Minimalistic, Dark Images That Make You Question Reality with Sean Mundy

Montreal-based photographer and digital artist Sean Mundy creates surreal images that disrupt the viewer’s emotions and evoke a sense of uncertainty. Today, we have the pleasure of talking to Sean about how he tackles an idea and brings it to life, and what he does to stay inspired.

What’s the one quote that always fires you up?

SM: “Suffer the pain of discipline or suffer the pain of regret.”

Always inspires me to be less lazy and try to get more work done whenever I can.

Do you have any particular habits that are a part of how you begin your creative process?

SM: I sketch out most of my ideas to shoot so I can refer to them and slowly build up to actually shooting the image after preparing whatever I need to prepare to shoot the image. Drawing them let’s me have something to aim towards when shooting; sometimes things don’t work out or just aren’t possible, but usually it helps a lot to have a sense of direction with what I’m going for in the process of creating an image instead of figuring things out while shooting.

What do you do when you hit a wall during your creative process?

SM: I try to look at a lot of different styles of art that aren’t really what I would normally look at, and listen to different genres of music. Overall, I just try to digest different or new art to open myself up and become inspired by anything.

What’s your favorite photo you’ve ever captured and why?

SM: Probably Sigil. It’s my favourite because I went into creating the image not expecting it to turn out at all, but to my surprise it worked out pretty well in the end, and it turned out to be one of my more popular images. This image working out gave me a lot of confidence to try more difficult things with my photos, so it’s definitely my personal favourite.

What book would you recommend any creative person read?

Dane Johnson was the former Editor of PHLEARN Magazine, where he helped creatives share their stories. Dane currently is the co-founder of Clementine Coffee Roasters and he accepts most assertions of his hipster-ness and millennialism without flinching.